(no subject)

[kat8cha]

Title: Picking Up Where You Left Off
Author: kat8cha
Fandom: DRRR!
Pairing: Kida/Mikado (LIGHT)
Summary: Kida is TT_TT about moving away, and somehow he has to tell Mikado. Mikado is ?_?
A/N: kink meme fill

"Mikado…" Kida sniffled, fully aware that he was a wet and miserable mess dripping on his best friend's doorstep while rain poured behind him. If Kida was a woman in one of his mother's dramas his mascara would be running and his hair would be flat (but he would still be beautiful and in the next scene his makeup would be perfect again). Kida was not a woman and he was not in a drama, he was just a kid who had been told the worst news ever.

News even worse than when his goldfish died.

Even worse than when Grandpa died.

This was almost as bad as if both of Kida's parents got run over by an out of control trucker and Kida was forced to live with Mikado. Except that way Kida would get to stay with Mikado, even if his parents were dead.

"Kida-kun!" Mikado stood highlighted in his doorway, wide eyes in a pale face with short spiky black hair. "You-you're wet! You're going to catch a cold!"

"Mikado!" Kida stamps one soggy foot, "This is more important than colds! This is life or-" Kida sneezes and wipes his dripping nose on the rain soaked sleeve of his favorite white hoodie.

Kida hears Mikado's mother coming before he sees her, but "Yes, he's here Kida-san." Mikado's mother shifts the phone so that her mouth is not pressed to the speaker. "Mikado, don't just stand there, bring Kida-kun inside and get him out of those wet clothes. Kida-kun you'll take a bath to warm up. Mikado, you should take yours too." Mikado's mother paused and glanced between the two boys. "You're still young enough to take them together, right?"

"Yes!" Kida shouts before Mikado can come up with one of his body-shy reactions to the idea of sharing a bath. They used to do it all the time, but such actions faded slightly in the past year. "We'll…" Kida sneezes again, barely having time to wipe his nose before Mikado is dragging him in out of the cold rain and closing the door. "Sorry, I'm just-" Kida sneezes again, his eyes watering from the force of the sneeze.

"You take care of him, Mikado." And Mikado's mother shuffled off back towards the living room, chatting on the phone with Kida's mother. "It's no problem at all, Mikado likes having company in the bath. Oh yes. He's going through a clingy phase…"

Kida dripped on the genkan while Mikado avoided looking at Kida. "Um." Kika dropped his hopeful gaze from Mikado's averted face to the ground, and realized he needed to take off his shoes. Bending over Kida wrestled with his wet double knotted shoelaces, rain water dripped off of the ends of his hair and a puddle was forming around his feet as well.

"Kida-kun…" Mikado sighed. Kida glanced up only too jolt backwards and fall over when Mikado's face appeared very close to his own. "You shouldn't knot them if you can't get them undone."

"But if I don't knot them they always come undone." Kida muttered under his breath, an old argument that they had been having since Kida learned how to double knot his shoelaces so he did not end up tripping over them. Mikado's clever fingers easily untangle Kida's wet laces, Kida manages to kick off the soaking wet shoes himself.

"You should take off your socks too." Mikado said with his nose crinkled slightly. "Or you'll leave wet footprints everywhere."

"Mikado is so picky." Kida stripped off his socks and held the wet fabric in one hand. He still left damp foot prints all the way to the bathroom, and dripped from the cuffs of his pants, the ends of his sleeves and the tips of his hair. Kida slipped out of his wet clothes and set them to hang off the edge of Mikado's hamper. Mikado just dumped his clothes right in. It was odd for the two of them to be so quiet, but Kida was the talker of the two of them and he had nothing to say. Well, nothing to says except what he had come here to say, and now that he was here, and more than that, now that he had been distracted Kida was not sure how to say it.

How was he supposed to tell Mikado that he was leaving him forever?

"Kida-kun?" Mikado turned on the shower and glanced at Kida out of the corner of his eye.

Kida ducked his head and started to wash up. Mikado took his cue from Kida and stayed silent. It was a very subdued wash up, and an even more subdued dip into the hot bath. Kida ducked his head and refused to even look at Mikado. Even when Mikado put his favorite rubber ducky in the bath and pushed it towards Kida. It was just heart breaking. If Kida looked at Mikado he knew he would just burst into tears again and cry and cry and cry until he made himself puke. Kida was not a cry baby, that had always been Mikado's job, but right now…

"Mikado." Kida clung to the edge of the bath tub and he glanced at Mikado out of the corner of his eye. Mikado was sitting in the bath with water up to his neck. He was staring attentively at Kida, waiting for whatever Kida wanted to say. Embarrassed Kida sunk into the bath so he was up to his nose in the warm water.

Grumbling and feeling silly and young Kida blew frustrated bubbles.

Mikado laughed. "Kida-kun! Whatever you want to say it can't be that bad!" Kida pulled himself out of the water and looked at Mikado.

Mikado smiled and rested a wet, slippery, warm hand on Kida's shoulder. "We'll always be friends, Kida-kun."

"MIKADO!" Kida felt hot tears fill his eyes and he tackled his best friend, banging their heads against the edge of the bath tub… "Ow…" Blinking away pain caused and emotional tears Kida stared down at his friend. "Mikado, we're moving to Tokyo!"

"What?!" It was Mikado's turn to blink away pain caused tears and jolt upright causing Kida to fall backwards. Water sloshed over the edge of the tub. "But Kida-kun, you can't!"

"Mikado, Kida-kun, if the two of you are just going to play it's time to get out of the bath. Your mother says she will pick you up in the morning, Kida-kun." Kida had spent more than a few nights over at the Ryuugamine household but knowing that this might be the last made him want it to last as long as possible. After all, his parents had waited until the last minute before telling him they were going to move.

The cheats. Parents were such sneaks. You couldn't trust adults.

"Kida-kun." Mikado climbed out of the bath and held out a towel to Kida, water dripping off of his body to hit the tiled bathroom floor like the rainwater had rolled off Kida's body to hit the floor of the genkan. "We should get out of the bath. We're both pruny!"

Kida laughed and tumbled gracelessly out of the bath. The two children rubbed themselves dry with the towels provided and then attacked each other, struggling to dry hair and chafe skin. Laughter echoed in the small bathroom, bouncing off of tiled floors and walls and echoing in the gurgle of bathwater dripping down the drain. They drop their dirty towels in the laundry and race each other down the hallway to Mikado's room. Mikado's mother is standing there with a quite half smile on her face while she rolls out the guest futon next to Mikado's bed. The pajamas she generally sets out for Kida hang off of her arm. The two boys are still wrapped in bath towels.

"Be sure to sleep before it gets too late you two." Mrs. Ryuugamine hands Kida the pajamas and pauses before she kisses his forehead. "I'm sorry you'll be moving away Kida-kun, thank you for being Mikado's friend." And then she was out of the room, closing the door behind her.

"…it's not like I'm going to DIE." Kida rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead, scouring at the kissed skin. "We'll still see each other, right Mikado?"

"…r-right!" Mikado fished in his drawers for a pair of pajamas to wear. "I'll visit you in Tokyo! And you can come back and visit me… and we'll call each other!"

"All the time!" Kida dropped the towel around his waist to the floor and stepped into the pajamas. "And there's always email… or even snail mail! We can be pen pals."

"Exactly." Mikado scurried to get dressed before Kida, knowing full well what would happen once Kida had pants on and the pajama top shrugged over his shoulders. A pillow hit the back of Mikado's head before he had his shirt halfway buttoned. "Kida-kun!"

Kida laughed and whacked Mikado with the pillow again. Mikado ducked the next swing and scrambled for his bed where his pillows sat. Kida tackled Mikado onto the mattress and mercilessly attacked his sides, tickling the other young boy until tears trickled out the sides of his eyes and his face was bright red.

"Boys." Mikado's mother knocked on the door again. "Go to bed."

"Yes, Mrs. Ryuugamine!" "Yes, Mom." Kida and Mikado chimed, then grinned at each other. Or, Mikado smiled, Kida grinned. Kida rolled off the bed to lie on the futon and stare at Mikado's ceiling. Mikado got off of his bed to stumble to the light switch and turn it off. Once the main ceiling light was off the room was only lit by the night light under Mikado's bed, a soft blue light that shone from the crack between Mikado's bed and the wall. Then Mikado stumbled back to his bed and lay on top of the sheets, staring at his ceiling alongside Kida.

"…it's not like I'm going to die." Kida said for the second time that evening. "Right, Mikado? You really will keep in contact?"

"I'll make Dad buy me that computer he promised me for my birthday." Mikado's father always promised him things, but rarely delivered. However Mikado could be scary when he wanted to be. He would be sure to get that computer. "And we'll e-mail each other every day."

Kida's laugh was tinged with sadness. "And I'll tell you all about the cute girls in Tokyo. WAY cuter than Miki-chan or Karen-chan, I'm sure."

"No one could be cuter than Karen-chan!" Mikado defended sulkily. "But you'll have to send me pictures of the cute Tokyo girlfriend you're going to get Kida-kun. Otherwise I'll think you're lying."

Kida popped up at the side of Mikado's bed and held out his pinky. "I swear."

Mikado waited a second for Kida's smile to fade slightly before hooking his own pinky around Kida's. "Then I swear too." The two of them clutched tightly at each other's pinky and shook hands, pumping three times. But when Mikado would have let go, Kida hung on.

"And a kiss to seal the deal!" Kida swooped in and pressed his lips against Mikado's. It was chaste. It was childish. It was dry and brief and all of these things.

It was Mikado's first kiss, and it was Kida's.

"Kida-kun!" Mikado flailed and pushed Kida away. "Now I DEFINITELY won't believe you have a cute Tokyo girlfriend!"

Kida laughed and both boys slipped under their covers, smiles lingering on their lips long after they had fallen asleep, neither thinking past what adventures they would have together, neither realizing just how dangerous and dark these adventures would be.

Or how long they would be separated before they began.